Alarmingly few Americans are eating their fruits and veggies

“Salud” is a Latin Post feature series that focuses on health and wellness topics and examines Latino health trends.

The researchers set a comparison of these results to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, according to which adults are adviced to consume 2 to 3 cups of vegetables and 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit daily, incase they perform less than 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity throughout the day. But what’s probably more shocking was that just 15 percent of US adults eat enough fruits daily to meet the federal recommendations basing from the new study of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the more active adults may even be able to eat more without increasing their calorie intake too much.

Moore went on to add that all types of vegetables and fruit count though the dietary guidelines for Americans recommended that most of the fruit intake came from whole fruit as opposed to fruit juice and we should eat vegetables and fruits that have lesser added sugars and solid fat.

Overall, 13 percent of people in the US reported eating enough fruit and 8.9 percent reported eating enough vegetables to meet that recommendation. It’s considerably less costly to purchase frozen or canned fruits and vegetables, although they’re often saturated with salts, sugars and preservatives.

It’s also not possible to know whether these numbers represent an increase or decrease in fruit and vegetable consumption by state from the period prior to 2010, since the surveys changed the way they asked about produce consumption during that time, Moore said.

It’s the southern states that are lowest in fruit and vegetable consumption, but all across the United States the numbers are disappointingly low, according to the report.

Fruit consumption was at 7% in Tennessee, the lowest while California was the highest at 17.7% which met the recommendation.

The proportion of Americans meeting vegetable recommendations ranged from 5.5 percent in Mississippi to 13 percent in California. According to the report, putting this idea into practice could mean exceeding current federal nutrition standards for meals and snacks.

Additionally, with the obesity epidemic, more and more people should be turning to fruits and vegetables as they are generally low calorie, full of fiber and water which can help to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. Also, educators can work to make vegetables more appealing to children.